The Stroke of a Pen

The form to the left is a page from the "Stimulus" bill that was signed into law on February 17, 2009 by Barack Obama, the President.

First, thank you to Renk from the Live with Renk Show out of Battle Creek. He posted this on his website and I got it from him. You might be able to see it clearer at his site. http://www.renkandfile.com/

This page is from Title X page 19. Notice the bill is typed up, but somebody (I have no idea who) crossed out the amount listed and changed it to a much higher number. It's not whited out and typed over. It's not backspaced away and retyped. As Maynard G. Krebbs would say, that would be too much "work". Instead, they drew a line through it and wrote in by hand the new figure.

This just amplifies the complete incompetence of the people that we elect to be our "leaders". There is no working the numbers to figure out if they will actually help create jobs. There is no analysis to come up with a proper figure to accomplish what they claim to want to accomplish. There is no careful thought nor deliberation. What this is, is someone saying, 'Barack wanted an $800 Billion dollar bill and we're short $1.5 Billion, so lets boost this number up by that much."

This is an embarassment. But then, we should be getting used to embarassment from this Congress and this President. Here's another example.

The Prime Minister of Great Britain came here for a meeting with the President. He came bearing gifts. Gordon Brown gave to our President an ornamental pen holder made from the remnants of the anti-slave ship, the HMS Gannet. Mr. Brown also gave Mr. Obama a First Edition, seven volume set of Winston Churchill biographies. Both of these gifts were well thought out treasures. They had meaning. Thought was put in to these gifts.

What do you think President Obama gave to Prime Minister Gordon Brown? This is really embarassing. You might want to sit down.

President Obama, the new leader of the free world. Arguably the most powerful man in the world, gave the Prime Minister of Great Britain, one of our greatest friends and allies, a 25 DVD set of American Movie Classics.

As I said, this is embarassing. Our laws and bills are made hastily just changing numbers with a papermate and the most thought for a gift to one of our best friends in the world is whether to tell little Rahm Emanuel he can keep the change left over after handing him $6.00 to run down to Walmart and buy the 25 DVD set of classic movies from the $5.00 bin of movies.

You're welcome to comment.

Brett